Date: 28/11/2008

NXP improves its position in chip-card IC vendor ranking by shipping 1 millionth IC

By shipping one million epassport chips, NXP claims as world's number one vendor of epassports chips in the eGovernment identification market. Worldwide, NXP is involved in more than 80 percent of all ePassport schemes with 55 out of the 67 countries using NXP's SmartMX chip technology including the USA, UK, France, Germany, Turkey and Singapore.

"NXP's ability to provide secure, reliable and interoperable chip technology for passports has lead to the SmartMX chip becoming the solution of choice by governments worldwide", said Günter Schlatte, general manager, eGovernment, NXP Semiconductors. "In addition to ePassports, NXP's technology is now being used in a number of domestic ID projects including national ID cards, health cards and driving licenses. We have developed a deep understanding of the complexity of governmental applications and constantly work on innovative chip solutions to address future security and performance needs of governments and citizens."

In 2005, NXP was the first silicon supplier to have a contactless security chip, the P5CD072, compliant with the BAC (Basic Access Control) requirements from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for ePassports and certified to the Common Criteria (CC) certification level EAL5+ by the German Federal Office of Information Security. Building on the strength of the original product, the company in 2007 launched a new IC into the SmartMX family, the P5CD080, which became the first EAL5+ certified chip in the industry fully supporting the EAC (Extended Access Control) specification from ICAO.

In September this year, NXP launched another SmartMX product - the P5CD081. This new chip set features Extended Access Control (EAC) ePassport operation with the complete citizen dataset, including fingerprints, in 3.5 seconds.

As per Frost & Sullivan's "Global Smart Card IC Study" report the overall chip card IC market in 2006 totaled about $1.9 Billion U.S. dollars.

The top chip card IC vendors ranking in 2006 were:
Infineon ---- 29.1%
Samsung ----- 15.5%
NXP ----- 14.3%
Atmel ------ 13.0%
Renesas ------- 12.5%
STMicroelectronics ------ 6.9%
Others ------ 8.7%

However this list might be no more valid with NXP estimated to move to 2nd position by improving its market share. When it comes security and reliability, the market always believes more in European firms for their excellent focus on security related issues.